Do they eat Fried Man in China?

Hit Movie Rings True in China: "The film's depiction of suspicion, deception and mobility have hit such a realistic chord with Chinese audiences that 'Wo zai kaihui,' 我在开会 or 'I'm in a meeting,' has become a running social joke."

When are Feng Xiaogang's movies going to make it to US audiences?

I saw this on affirmative action, and thought of Carl Cohen's review of Thomas Sowell's Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study:

• Politicians buy support by confirming preferences and extending them to more and more ethnic groups. Enlargement is the easiest course. Race preference does not wind down; it winds up. Proliferation is the rule.


• The inferior performance of some ethnic groups is not always a consequence of discrimination against them. On the contrary, even the imposition of discriminatory advantages favoring a majority cannot obscure the fact that some groups prove less competent than others.


• Preferences promote racial conflict.

(via aldaily)

Criticizing Kerry's "middle class misery index", Easterblogg has these nuggets:

"It would be easy to reduce health care costs--just stop paying for heart surgery over the age of 70, stop paying for most dialysis, stop paying for nonessential procedures that only relieve pain, stop trying to save very premature infants, and so on. (I cite these because they are the real-world ways that some European health care systems restrain costs.)

"And college costs are rising but so are benefits, with university enrollment setting records and an ever-higher percentage of high-school graduates having at least some college experience. College costs seem to be up right now mainly for standard supply-and-demand reasons--demand (number of students wishing to enter) is rising faster than supply (freshman slots). You could certainly restrain college costs by reducing demand (number of students wishing to enter). But it's good that ever-higher numbers of students wish to enter college! This tells us many favorable things about trends in American middle-class life, as sending the children to college, once a rarity, has become the national norm."

Reason

Reason: Emotional Choices: What story you choose to believe about antidepressants reveals a deeper truth about who you are.

In Heading Off the Next War, David M. Lampton and Kenneth Lieberthal argue,
"Chen apparently believes that China's threat to use force is a bluff and that the U.S. commitment to back Taiwan militarily is unrestricted -- the logic being that a democratic America and a supportive U.S. Congress would back Taipei no matter what sparked a conflict.
"Chen and his predecessor Lee Teng-hui have been so sure of U.S. support that defense spending on the island has continually declined over the past 12 years. But Chen's two assumptions are flawed, and they could well lead him to take actions that precipitate war." They call for "establishing a stable framework across the strait", including "Taiwan can continue to assert during the decades-long period covered by the agreement that it is an "independent, sovereign country," but it must abjure additional steps to turn this island-wide sensibility into a juridical fact. Beijing can continue to assert that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of it, but it must give up its threat to use military force to change Taiwan's status." Sounds nice, but I don't see China giving up its threats.

A New Use for Good Earth: Chinese Farmers Pay Price in Drive to Build Golf Centers by Peter S. Goodman.

We saw the Russian Burnt by the Sun (Утомлённые солнцем; 1994), which won the 1994 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. However, I felt it was just too long, with the first hour plus meandering endlessly. When the secret policeman finally drags off his rival, it seems only fair, even if he feels suicidal about it later. Still, the director Nikita Mikhalkov and especially his daughter Nadezhda Mikhalkova act well.

Will my next vacation be in Molvania?

Somebody was just a little naive.

Reflections on the oldest profession by Theodore Dalrymple. After reading E. W. Hornung and Guy de Maupassant, Dalrymple says he "learned what my subsequent experience, which includes an acquaintance with several hundred burglars at least, has confirmed, namely not to place too great a reliance on a haphazard knowledge of imaginative literature for an accurate picture of the world.

"I do not regret my literary initiation into the world of crime and prostitution, and a world without literature would be, to me, an intolerable one, in which life would hardly be worth living. But had my life taken a different turn, had I not been able to test E. W. Hornung and de Maupassant against certain experienced realities, had I lived entirely through books, as I might easily have done, had I lived in a pleasing ivory tower, for example by being a university teacher (as my temperament might easily have inclined me to be), I think I should have had a much distorted and reduced, though no doubt much more comfortable, Weltanschauung, an altogether more pleasing view of life and the human condition."

No wonder he's so put off by the losers he runs into.

(via aldaily, as is the item below)

In Asia Times, John Parker writes: "All across the globe, from Sydney to Siberia, from Quebec to Patagonia, there is one sporting obsession that unifies the entire human race. Young and old, male and female, black, white and every shade in between, there is one pleasurable activity that unifies them all.

"I'm speaking, of course, about America-bashing. (Why, did you think I was talking about something else?) "

China's Martha Stewart, With Reasons to Smile: "Christmas has taken root here for the first time in the Communist era, not as religious rite but as a commercial frenzy"

I've just been alerted to the History and Commercial Atlas of China (1935).

And on a totally unrelated note, FlyChina.

Earlier I mentioned Actual Causes of Death. I forgot before that I'd mentioned What are the odds of dying?. But I notice the National Safety Council uses some EPA numbers. Does that mean I shouldn't trust them?

The 2002 National Survey of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Attitudes and Behaviors is summarized here. On the same topic, nearly 80 percent of adult Americans take at least one walk of five minutes or longer during the summer months. Yeah, we've seen that; we walk year 'round, and only recently as the weather has started warming up do we see a few more walkers. But 5 minutes?

This lobbyist site has info about Pedestrian Safety, including this nugget:

While only about 5 percent of all trips are made on foot, about 12 percent of all traffic deaths are pedestrians, making walking one of the most dangerous modes of travel... While 12 percent of all traffic deaths are pedestrians...less than one percent (0.7 percent) of federal transportation construction, operations, and maintenance funds are spent to ensure a safe walking environment.

At least a few years ago, well over 4000 pedestrians died. OK, to a certain extent it's convincing that government transportation spending privileges automobilistas, pedestrians have a certain responsibility. Even the full Mean Streets 2002 report says nothing about the role of alcohol.

According to Pedestrian Statistics

• 4,808 US pedestrians were killed and 78,000 injured in traffic crashes.


• Alcohol was involved (either driver or pedestrian) in 46% of the traffic crashes that resulted in pedestrian fatalities. Of the pedestrians involved, 34% were intoxicated with a BAC of .08 or greater.


• Pedestrian fatalities accounted for 86% of non-occupant fatalities, 12% were bicyclists and 2% were skateboard riders, roller skaters, etc.

According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving

• Thirty-eight percent of all pedestrians 16 years of age or older killed in traffic crashes in 2000 had alcohol in their system. (NHTSA, 2003).


• The driver, pedestrian, or both were intoxicated in 41 percent of all fatal pedestrian crashes in 2002. In these crashes, the intoxication rate for pedestrians was nearly triple the rate for drivers — 34 percent and 13 percent, respectively. Both the pedestrian and the driver were intoxicated in 5 percent of the crashes that resulted in a pedestrian fatality. (NHTSA, 2003)

According to Traffic Safety Facts 2002: Pedestrians:

• Most pedestrian fatalities in 2002 occurred in urban areas (71 percent), at nonintersection locations (78 percent), in normal weather conditions (89 percent), and at night (65 percent).


• More than two-thirds (68 percent)of the 2002 pedestrian fatalities were males.


• Pedestrian fatalities accounted for 86 percent of all nonoccupant fatalities in 2002.


• Alcohol involvement — either for the driver or for the pedestrian — was reported in nearly one-half (46 percent) of the traffic crashes that resulted in pedestrian fatalities. Of the pedestrians involved, 34 percent were intoxicated.

Fat city? Nope, it's the 'burbs by Laura Pulfer

You can't be too careful, you know, jumping to conclusions, so for $4 million I guess we'll find out for scientific certainty. I myself have observed that city people don't appear to be any more svelte than suburban people. But, of course, I am no scientist.

My friend Jan and I discussed this over lunch. She eats like a bird, so she did not take advantage of the opportunity to accessorize her half-pounder with cheese and bacon. I, myself, was drinking a diet cola with my Nuggets of something fried but unrecognizable and Biggie Sized with a bale of fries for only an additional 39 cents.

We agreed that our neighborhood could use more sidewalks. Sometimes we almost have to stand in the street when we're waiting in line at Graeter's during the summertime.

There has to be a link.

Porky America

From 1975 to 1995, when cities were seriously sprawling, there was a 42 percent decline in walking, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. (So far the links between urban sprawl and the divorce rate, babies born out of wedlock and violence on television have not been explored, although these things too escalated during that same couple of decades.)

Of course hiking in the French countryside is presumably much safer.

A fascinating broadcast report by Jeff Tyler on Homeless Economics at Marketplace.org. At least some homeless people want to be that way, and don't see it as a bad life.

Then the next day, Robert Reich had one on Middle East Economics, noting that the Middle East was relatively unintegrated into the world economy. In other words, globalization is an enemy of terrorism.

Here's an earlier report where various other Democrats made the same point.

Paul Blustein in the Washington Post made the same connection earlier.

I like Classical Values, discovered via Instapundit, particularly what he says about Ashcroft's war on porn. Then there's Eugene Volokh on the ultimate outcome: either it'll be ineffective, or they'll have to violate everyone's rights.

Strange. Last night we watched a NOVA program on the coelacanth, and today I finally notice my rickety richwin software presents "...还生存著的中生代的一种腔棘鱼" as an autocomplete option for 现在. In other words, they expect people often intend to go on to say "there still exists a kind of coelacanth from the Mesozoic Era" when they type "now" in Chinese. Sure, someone's going to say, hey, I type that all the time. The weird thing is that I've never noticed this before. The only other autocomplete option was "...不遵守交通规则" ("not respecting traffic regulations") for 走路 ("walking"). Bastards. What about the Chinese drivers that fail to respect traffic regulations?

Why do they do it?

Much taken by a speech of the lawyer towards the beginning of the movie, I skimmed through the text of Le colonel Chabert (available in pdf format here)

Combien de choses n'ai-je pas apprises en exerçant ma charge! J'ai vu mourir un père dans un grenier, sans sou ni maille, abandonné par deux filles auxquelles il avait donné quarante mille livres de rente! J'ai vu brûler des testaments; j'ai vu des mères dépouillant leurs enfants, des maris volant leurs femmes, des femmes tuant leurs maris en se servant de l'amour qu'elles leur inspiraient pour les rendre fous ou imbéciles, afin de vivre en paix avec un amant. J'ai vu des femmes donnant à l'enfant d'un premier lit des goûts qui devaient amener sa mort, afin d'enrichir l'enfant de l'amour. Je ne puis vous dire tout ce que j'ai vu, car j'ai vu des crimes contre lesquels la justice est impuissante. Enfin, toutes les horreurs que les romanciers croient inventer sont toujours au-dessous de la vérité. Vous allez connaître ces jolies choses-là, vous; moi, je vais vivre à la campagne avec ma femme, Paris me fait horreur.

Here's a mediocre English version:

How many things have I learned in the exercise of my profession! I have seen a father die in a garret, deserted by two daughters, to whom he had given forty thousand francs a year! I have known wills burned; I have seen mothers robbing their children, wives killing their husbands, and working on the love they could inspire to make the men idiotic or mad, that they might live in peace with a lover. I have seen women teaching the child of their marriage such tastes as must bring it to the grave in order to benefit the child of an illicit affection. I could not tell you all I have seen, for I have seen crimes against which justice is impotent. In short, all the horrors that romancers suppose they have invented are still below the truth. You will know something of these pretty things; as for me, I am going to live in the country with my wife. I have a horror of Paris.

The thing is, in the movie, this is near the beginning, but in the story, it's pretty much a conclusion. And why did the movie have Chabert living near stinky bears (!!!) instead of stinky cows, as in the original. Maybe they thought people don't know cows stink, but they have smelled bears at the zoo?

Last night we saw Les Dimanches de Ville d'Avray (Sundays and Cybele; 1962). I can't say it did much for me.